The Hindu Business Line : The smart way to tackle e-waste

The US-based Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) is an organisation that works to promote human health and environmental justice, especially in the high-tech industry.

Over the past few years, the organisation's `Computer TakeBack Campaign' in the US — which encourages computer manufacturers to take back and recycle obsolete computers — has attracted attention and interest. The campaign promotes lifecycle producer responsibility within the high-tech electronics industry and also encourages responsible attitudes among consumers.

A founder and former Executive Director of SVTC, Ted Smith, is now the organisation's Senior Strategist and also chairs the steering committee of the `Computer TakeBack Campaign'. Smith, who is the co-editor of a new book called `Challenging the Chip', was recently in India. eWorld caught up with him for a chat on electronic or e-waste, the response to the computer recycling campaign and measures that India can adopt to manage e-waste. Excerpts from the interview:

Globally, how serious is the issue of electronic waste?

I think it's the fastest growing waste problem in the world and that's true particularly in Asia. So much of the electronic waste that's generated in other parts of the world ends up being dumped into Asia; also in Africa, also in other places, but particularly in Asia.

For one thing, it's much cheaper to ship all the equipment from the US to Asia. There was a study commissioned by the US Environmental Protection Agency that showed that it was 10 times cheaper to export electronic waste to Asia than it was to process it in the US. So when you have that kind of financial differential, the incentives are just enormous. And the US is the only major country in the world to not have ratified the Basel Convention. So it's legal for people in the US to ship hazardous electronic waste. It's not only the volume of the waste that is growing exponentially, but because it's so hazardous is really why we are most concerned. A typical computer monitor or television set that uses a cathode ray tube has anywhere from four to eight pounds of lead in it. And virtually all the flat panels have mercury in them. We did a quick calculation and estimated that just for computers that were becoming obsolete in the US, it is the equivalent of about a billion pounds of lead. The numbers are astronomical.

How have industry and government responded to your computer take-back campaign in the US?

Well, we've had several different things going on. One of our most successful impacts has been to help change the direction and policy of Dell computer company. When we started the campaign, we assessed that Dell was an environmental laggard. And as of now, they have made tremendous progress. That's a tremendous change from just a few years ago. I find that very encouraging.

One of the positive aspects of dealing with the electronics industry is that they are so innovative. If they decide that they want to innovate in an environmentally positive way, there's tremendous opportunity to do so.

But in terms of our policy campaign — we've being trying to import the European legislation into the US — we've had no success at all in the US Congress. We have a new Congress now, and we talked to a number of people in both the Senate and the House and they were very receptive to our ideas. So we think that there are some real significant opportunities. What we have been doing is working at the State level and there are about half-a-dozen States now that have passed laws to address electronic waste issues and we think this year 25 more States are going to introduce legislation.

What public support has there been for the computer take-back campaign and other e-waste recycling programmes?

There's a lot of support at the local level. Most people have been accumulating their old electronic products in their own homes and they don't know what to do with them. Often, they look to the local government for a solution and the local governments don't have solutions. It's too expensive for local governments to run their own recycling programmes for electronic waste. Consumers are continuing to demand more of government.

But we think that the solutions cannot really be a government-run solution. It has to be a solution that focuses on the companies themselves. And that's why this concept of individual producer responsibility is so important. That, I think, is probably the most important breakthrough initiative we are involved in.

If we can change the way people think about producing products to include the end-of-life costs in the sales price of the product itself, then companies can compete with each other to develop products that are easier to recycle.

And if they can do that in a better way than their competitors and differentiate themselves by building a cleaner, more recyclable product, that's going to revolutionise the whole way people do business. And that's what we really think is the long-term goal. Focusing on electronic waste is merely a way to get to cleaner design.

What happens to computers that are returned to companies as part of the take-back campaign?

In the best case, they are recycled. But even the best technology for recycling right now is still pretty crude. Basically, what they do is grind up the products. They take entire computers or entire monitors and throw them into these primitive machines and they simply grind them down and they separate the components.

And then at the end of the shredder, you'll see a stream coming out that's mostly metal or a stream coming out that's mostly plastic or a stream that's mostly precious metals. But since the assembly of those machines is so complex, you can never end up with pure separation into the elemental parts.

You don't get a pure copper stream; you don't get a pure silver stream, a pure gold stream — you get things that are mixed. As sophisticated as the technology is right now, it can never be nearly as sophisticated as the production technology; there just hasn't been the investment put into recycling technology. It's still a very new technology. The real value is in the precious metals such as copper and they will send those to smelters where they'll recover the metals and reuse them.

Do you see companies doing formal recycling programmes such as computer take-backs in countries such as India?

I haven't seen a lot of activity in India in take-back yet. I guess one of the areas that is continuing to be a big challenge is that there seem to be so many environmental challenges in India. Sometimes, it may seem to people that computer recycling is not a high enough priority compared to some of the other huge problems such as air pollution.

But I think if people understand that if they don't develop effective recycling programmes, these toxics are going to continue to build up and they are going to continue to be a huge problem in the future. I hope that the Government would see this as a long-term investment to make sure that there are appropriate take-back programmes. And they can get the companies to participate in being part of the solution rather than shifting those costs on to the government and taxpayers.

Will you support Indian organisations working in e-waste recycling? What can India do to properly manage e-waste?

Yes, that's one of the reasons I was interested in coming here. So much of the activity right now is going on in India and China and other Asian countries. And the solutions have to arise here and they have to be implemented here.

I think getting the policy framework right while there's still time is what's the most important thing right now. And I think if India is able to establish a producer responsibility policy, to shift the responsibility back to the manufacturers that will prevent the terrible problems that we're starting to see.

But if they don't, if they are unable to develop those policies in the relatively near future, the problem is just going to overwhelm people.

sankarmr@thehindu.co.in

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